Yesterday’s interview with Bravo Vice President Dan Warn was a fast but comfortably-paced discussion, in which the exec provided much needed insight into the Ontario government implementation, including the purported challenges highlighted in my recent posts.

The big question of course was whether or not Bravo has or had employed strong-arm tactics, by suggesting that the Ministry of Government and Consumer Services “MGCS” is mandating the use of their platform?

Specifically, the assertion of sources that ” . . . since the award Bravo has been running up and down Ontario broader public sector claiming that MGS has “mandated” that all public sector orgs switch over to it… even going so far to darkly hint that provincial funding could get taken away if people don’t transition to their platform. We’ve heard this from customers in healthcare, academia, school boards, etc – very strong arm sales tactics. Huge bully pulpit.”

The following is Dan Warn’s response:

“a bit of information that is not public is that they’ve (MGCS) have triggered phase II as of June of this year, so that all subsequent tenders need to be going out in that fully phase II on-line end-to-end format, which I think is significant given some of the things that you’ve shared in terms of adoption numbers.”

Warn then added . . .

“Bravo is very pleased with the win, and our investment to date to get through what is phase I – progressing into phase II, where we expect to see a significant uptick in the number of on-line tenders.”

But here is a key point relative to the mandate question . . . change management and adoption according to Warn, are being initiated and implemented by MGCS and, that said mandate only involve the 27 or 28 ministries who are under MGCS.

The mandate, as Warn would tell me, does not apply to the broader Ontario public sector.

Daniel Warn, Bravo Solution’s Public Sector Vice President

So there is a mandate relating to phase II of the program, in which the use of the Bravo platform will be mandatory for the 27 or 28 ministries that fall directly under MGCS governance. But this mandate does not extend to include those provincial organizations that fall outside of the aforementioned 28.

As for Bravo’s activities relating to the above message, as well as those of Deloitte – a consulting firm the company hired as they did not have the resources to reach out to the broader public sector – Warn stressed that at no time has either party indicated that the mandate that applies to the 28 ministries, also applies to the entire Provincial government. In fact he even added that he has never heard the mandate mentioned in relation to the broader public sector – at least not in any of the meetings with which he was involved.

There are of course some additional insights such as why Bravo hired Deloitte, MGCS responsibility in terms of the ultimate success of the implementation, and why the MGCS implementation is an important beachhead for the company.

This is an interesting story. There have been examples in the UK (not involving Bravo as far as I know) where a collaboration has failed to secure buy-in from the other partner bodies and the critical mass to make a profit has not been there. Everyone becomes a loser. It is vital that it is known from the outset who is ‘in’ and who is ‘out’. When running a UK consortium, I introduced the rule that organisations had to state clearly if they were ‘in’. ‘In’ meant ‘ commitment. Any organisation that could not agree to this, i.e. provide certainty, was out. It worked. Few wanted to be ‘out’.

Interesting perspective Colin . . . and practical. The real question is weather or not a government entity such as an MGS – or any central government body – has both the teeth, the courage and the will to follow through on that clear cut position (or ultimatum).

What I found interesting is a comment that Dan Warn made during the interview that the success or failure of the initiative falls squarely on the shoulders of the Ontario Government.

That also took courage because there is a general belief that the majority of governments are risk averse and are more inclined to abdicate rather than enforce engagement and compliance. Conversely, most vendors usually accept such conditions of neutrality despite their obvious implications on the success or failure of the initiative.